Several astrophotographers on BAUT have posted their pictures of 2007 TU24 as it tumbled past Earth last night. The pix are very cool. There are two ways in general to take them: let the ’scope track the stars, and the asteroid will appear as a streak as it moves across the sky, or track the asteroid, which will look like a dot as the stars leave streaks.
Both methods were employed by various rock hunters, and the results are interesting. Go take a look!
I’ll have at least one more thing to say about this asteroid later, maybe Wednesday. I’d like the chance to talk about the actual science of it. There’s some nifty stuff going on.
January 29th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
NIFTY STUFF? Oh noes, there goes our magnetosphere!
January 29th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Nice pictures. But I can’t see the plasma lighting behind it!
January 29th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Those are some really pretty pictures. I really wish I lived in a nice dark area and had a nice ’scope to do stuff like that.
January 29th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
It’s headed right for us!!!!!!!!!
January 29th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Looking at those photos, I kept hearing Maxwell Smart’s voice in my head:
“Missed it .. by THAT much!”
January 29th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Heya Phil, I was wondering, with the “continuing threat” (sorry, couldn’t resist) of the electric field of ol’ TU24, would a fairly obvious sign of impending doom be a kick-arse aurora display all over the world? I only ask ’cause it’s the first clear night here (north Scotland) for weeks and there’s not a ribbon in the sky!
On a different matter, brilliant Horizon on BBC 2 with Dr Cox (the “What’s wrong with gravity” one). It can be watched on the BBC’s iPlayer for the next 6 days, don’t know if everyone can get it but it’s defo worth it. Cheers for the heads up about the program!
January 29th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Have you seen your video re-jigged at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C_RrEdAumQ&feature=related
by a very naughty person?
January 29th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Great picture.
I am disappointed. It was nowhere near as spectacular as I was expecting it to be. Where are all the earthquakes, firestorms and unknown effects. Oh wait…
January 29th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Cool picture!
Though, I am disappointed. It was nowhere near as spectacular as I was expecting it to be. Where are all the earthquakes, firestorms and unknown effects. Oh wait…
January 29th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
@Yoshi, before any pictures are posted to the internet they are edited to look like what NASA and the great science conspiracy wants everybody to see. Unless you look at websites like tu24orgs website and the other truthsayers.
January 29th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
hey want a nice photo? heres from tu24org
http://www.tu24.org/forums/uploads/2768sheepcircle.jpg
January 29th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Hey Phil: you say that the ‘roid will miss us by hundreds of thousands of miles. Now I’d like to make it clear that I understand and agree with everything you say about this rock, and I get angry about those who perpeutate idiocy about things like this, but am I right in thinking that “hundreds of thousands of miles” is a pretty close shave, all things considered?
January 29th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
German amateurs managed to capture 2007 TU24 passing close to the galaxy M 33 one night ago and close to the galaxy pair M 81/82 tonight - and there is also a new radar image!
Daniel Fischer
January 29th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Willo, let me put it in perspective.
Imagine you are holding in your hand, a small rock, that’s about an inch in diameter… okay?
That is TU24. Now..it’s to scale.. and it’s moving along a line, that will pull it away from earth. This is as close as that little one inch rock is going to get.
Now.. to put the earth into perspective.. the earth is a 2/3rd mile diameter sphere.
So.. a 2/3rd mile diameter sphere represents Earth. A one inch rock represents TU24.
To give you a picture of how close this “VERY CLOSE” approach to us is… you have to understand that the 1 inch rock was 42 miles from the 2/3rd mile sphere.
SO, yes.. it was close compared to the others we’ve seen… but “a pretty close shave” might be too much needless metaphor for our own good.
January 29th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
We’ve had 20-40 mpg straight-line westerlies for the past 2 hours here in TN. It’s like we’re living on the coast of California. I supposed you’re going to say TU24 had nothing to do with that. Prove it!
January 29th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Bill, no kidding about that wind. Holy cow, that was incredible. I walked out to get the mail and I was just about blown out of Rutherford County. Freaking amazing wind that squall produced.
January 29th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Phil, your video on 2007TU24 is the Space Video of the Day.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
[…] Pictures of 2007 TU24 By The Bad Astronomer Several astrophotographers on BAUT have posted their pictures of 2007 TU24 as it tumbled past Earth last night. The pix are very cool. There are two ways in general to take them: let the ’scope track the stars, and the asteroid will … Bad Astronomy Blog - http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog […]
January 29th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
just pay a visit to apod today and you will see the most detailed picture of tu24. ha ha ha!nasa people may not even know what it is!
January 30th, 2008 at 1:06 am
I felt things shake and stuff fell over, then there was smoke and a burning smell, then more weird smells… oh, wait- it was my cats knocking things over, me being so distracted by the thoughts of impending doom that i burned my dinner, then i realised i had forgotten to clean the litterbox. i thought the end of the world would be more dramatic.
Phil!! Loved both your videos, the real one and the edited one!
January 30th, 2008 at 4:15 am
Thanks for the analogy Jarrod. I can appreciate that calling it a ‘pretty close shave’ in front of the doomsayers might be too much fuel for their fire! All I mean is that astronomically speaking, it’s incredibly close, and that’s why astronomers have been so excited about it. It would have attracted little attention had it not come so close, after all.
Again, I’m not trying to lend credence to the asteroid nutjobs. The scales and distances involved in astronomy blow my mind a little bit, that’s all, but I do have some idea of how breathtakingly far apart everything is. So when I hear of things passing within ‘hundreds of thousands of miles’ of us, like 2007 TU24, it thrills me a bit to think that *something from out there* came so close!
January 30th, 2008 at 4:59 am
You’re right, there’s science to talk about on this asteroid. This TU24dotORG nutcase wrecked something that should’ve been a pretty darn cool topic of discussion.
She just spewed her excuses on the website. OMG! WEATHER IS ALL WEIRD! I hope she mentions that the whole winter has been strange thus far, AND THE ASTEROID WAS PRETTY FAR AWAY at the start.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:16 am
There are no lightning bolts. Shouldn’t there by lightning bolts? Where are the lightning bolts? The photos are obviously a hoax perpetrated upon the people of Earth by the vast NASA-Phil conspiracy.
By the way, there’s a cool video of Earthrise and Earthset taken from the fake Japanese satellite orbiting our fake moon.
January 30th, 2008 at 6:01 am
NASA… Phil… both four letters. Does anyone see a sinister pattern here?
January 30th, 2008 at 9:07 am
First, Jarrod, I’m in Rutherford as well…small world.
Secondly, when _exactly_ did the asteroid enter the earth’s magnetosphere? I’m just curious since TU24.ORG keeps talking about the effects on the magnetosphere:
“…since TU24’s entry into the magnetosphere.”
The magnetosphere/solar wind simulator was definitely very active during the 28th and 29th, but was it really due to the asteroid? I’m curious about the science behind this.
January 30th, 2008 at 9:29 am
I wonder why we seem to have no captured asteroids in earth orbit???
What a wonderful resource for space manufacturing THAT would be,,,
On the other hand, if there were earth orbiting asteroids, some nut case would be claiming “We’re all doomed! The earth orbiting asteroids are falling,,,”
Gary 7
January 30th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Gary Ansorge writes:
[[I wonder why we seem to have no captured asteroids in earth orbit???
What a wonderful resource for space manufacturing THAT would be,,,]]
The same technology needed to divert an asteroid into Earth orbit (mass drivers on the surface?) could also be used to divert it directly into the path of Earth. Thus, I can’t see any Earth government allowing another to try such a thing.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Oh, Poo! So, I guess we’re stuck with Lunar resources for construction material? Well, it requires a more powerful mass driver to launch the material to L5 for conversion into power sats, etc. but WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY,,,
,,,now all we need is the will,,,
GAry 7
PS> How about moving a SMALL asteroid into earth orbit, say, about 50 meters in diameter,,,that shouldn’t be TOO big a risk for earther governments to get behind,,,
January 30th, 2008 at 11:07 am
“Gary Ansorgeon 30 Jan 2008 at 9:29 am
I wonder why we seem to have no captured asteroids in earth orbit???”
Well, d’you count the results of an asteroid smacking into proto-Earth? Our Moon may not be a captured asteroid per se, but an asteroid was involved…
(Though judging from the size estimates of the impacting body, it may have qualified for planetary status.)
That aside, it’s not easy to catch an asteroid unless you have a really really big catcher’s mitt. That is, in the normal course of events, an asteroid passing near a planet will just pass on by, a la TU 24. Most of ‘em are traveling a lot faster than Earth’s paltry escape velocity at that distance.
As I understand it, what you really need is to slow the traveling asteroid down a bit, and the best way to do that is if it interacts with the outer atmosphere of your planet. For Jupiter and the other monster planets, with their whopping big atmospheres, this may be easier, which would explain why they have so much orbital clutter.
It’s harder to account for why midget Mars managed to pull off the trick twice. Even if you allow that in the past, when it was a warmer place, it might have had more atmosphere, it still leaves the question of how that wimp snared a pair of asteroids while buff Venus and Earth missed out. Luck of the draw, perhaps… Mars just had closer encounters?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Mars is closer to the asteroid belt, too, so the flux of small passing asteroids might be higher in its vicinity. Does anyone know the density/semimajor axis function for the asteroids?
January 30th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
I imagine capturing an asteroid would also require a really big tranquilizer gun.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Here is a series taken last night (when the weather finally cleared here) of TU24. This gif is comprised of 10 images taken by Dr. Mike Hicks and Mr. Jim Young at the Table Mountain Observatory (JPL) on 29 Jan 08. The camera is a 1K CCD mounted on a 24” telescope. These are two second exposures roughly 35 or so seconds apart and tracking on the object.
http://tmoa.jpl.nasa.gov/Gallery%20Images/gifs/TU24.gif
February 2nd, 2008 at 7:05 am
Are there enough images to calculate a light curve and determine TU24’s period of rotation?